


On the Origin of the Maiden of Shadows

by Ilya_Boltagon, TheLightdancer



Series: Dagor Dagorath [4]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ainur - Freeform, Body Horror, Dark Magic, Gen, Lovecraftian Themes, Maiar, Mind Control, Torture, Vampirism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilya_Boltagon/pseuds/Ilya_Boltagon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: In the beginning, there came the first set of twins in the house of Melian. One became a figure of wonder who brought forth the fairest things in Arda. This is not her tale, this is that of her sister, who would become the Woman of Shadows.
Relationships: Elu Thingol | Elwë Singollo/Melian, Gandalf | Mithrandir | Olorin & Melian (Tolkien), Lúthien Tinúviel & Melian, Melian (Tolkien) & Thuringwethil (Tolkien), Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor & Thuringwethil (Tolkien), Sauron | Mairon & Thuringwethil
Series: Dagor Dagorath [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979809
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	On the Origin of the Maiden of Shadows

Melian looked around, confused and slightly concerned. "Athaewen? Sister?" Her voice was tentative, almost timid. She and her twin had been assigned here, to try and repair the damage done to this small valley that Melkor had attempted to forcibly raise up, while also drying its many rivers and waterfalls to mere trickles, yet she stood here alone. There was no sign of Athaewen. Her twin's task had been to fly above this wounded part of Arda, to determine what of it might be saved, that she and Melian could then Sing some Order and Life back into it.

"Athaewen!" She called once more, now with urgency in her tone. If her sister failed to appear, and this task was not completed... it would be bad, Melian sensed that much. In the far future, she could feel that this river-valley would be important for some reason, and thus it had to be healed, to thrive and flourish.

To her great relief, in a flash of light, her twin appeared, her auric colors looking brighter than usual: Athaewen was clearly pleased about something. Out of habit, Melian smiled back at her. "I was beginning to think you had forgotten our task today!"

Athaewen glanced away from her, looking over the valley they were to heal, clearly distracted. "No, no... I was just having a conversation and quite forgot that we had been ordered to come here." Her tone was slightly bitter, and Melian worried over this.

"Who were you speaking with that made you forget our task in undoing Melkor's harm to this world, sister mine?" She feared she already knew the answer, for Athaewen found pleasure in the company of Lord Aule's chief Maia Mairon, although Melian had ever distrusted him, even though she could not put into words why that was. He was bright, powerful and glorious, all his words seemed fair, and yet... To her, he was a shining coating around a toxic piece of rock.

Athaewen faced her, the colors of her aura already darkening. "What concern is it of yours? Besides, I see in your shades that you already know, so you do not need to ask."

Melian sighed. "Must you speak to Mairon as much as you do? I cannot fathom why you don't see him for what he is."

"A good and faithful Maia to his Lord is somehow displeasing to you, then?" Athaewen snorted. "I think you are just jealous that he pays you not the least attention, sister."

Melian shuddered. "I would turn and run if he were to come _near_ me!"

To her shock, Athaewen's expression twisted in what could have been a sneer, before swiftly being replaced with something condescending, pitying. "You are young, Melian."

"Barely moreso than you!" She retorted to her twin, attempting to lighten the mood. They had often played this game in the past, but Athaewen did not tease her in return this time, instead returning to the topic of Mairon.

"He knows much, Melian, and I have learned a great deal from him."

"Not least how to shirk your responsibilities. I feared I would be left to work here alone!" Melian retorted, her own aura darkening towards annoyance and frustration now. She sighed, consciously letting go of the negative emotion. "I do not wish to quarrel with you, sister."

"Then let us be about our work here without converse, since it seems you refuse to listen to me." Athaewen's words stung, but before Melian could reply, Athaewen had launched herself upwards, surveying the damaged valley from above. Her next words were only reports on what needed to be done. The subject of Mairon was dropped- for now.

* * *

Melian drifted aimlessly through the upper air currents, her typically bright colors faded and drab, as they had been lately. Since their disagreement concerning Mairon, Athaewen had scarcely come near her, in fact she was rarely to be found at all, and Melian had learned that her twin had requested tasks that placed her close to Mairon- and away from her. She was sorrowful- and worried, for on at least one occasion when Athaewen had supposedly been seeking Mairon's company, he had been accosting Melian herself, even to the point of scorning her sister's attentions to him! She had no interest in his honeyed words, and had stated as much, leaving no room for doubt. Following that, she had immediately tried to reach out to Athaewen, to tell her, as gently as possible, what Mairon had said, so that she might comfort her afterwards, but Athaewen had refused to even let her speak.

"Melian?" The male voice was as warm and kind as always, disturbing her thoughts. "I have never seen you so melancholy. What ails you?"

"Olorin." She sighed with no small relief. Her closest friend besides her twin would be a great support to her now, surely? And he had lately been spending much time with Lady Nienna: perhaps he could also advise her on how to heal Athaewen's sorrow when she finally managed to tell her sister the truth about Mairon? "I... my sister and I are having some... disagreements."

Olorin's colors shifted towards tones of worry and sadness. "Disagreements? But you two have always been so close..."

"I fear that Mairon has come between us of late." And Melian explained: Athaewen's interest in Mairon, her own warnings against him, the quarrel, and Mairon's words to Melian herself, which she had not yet managed to pass on to her twin sister.

Olorin's colors darkened still further as she spoke, and he seemed more concerned than she herself was. "Have you spoken to Lady Vana or Lady Este of your concerns?"

Melian turned away, partly in shame. "No. I am aware I should, but... I do not wish to bring their disappointment or anger upon my sister. Not when there is a chance I can reason with her myself."

The look Olorin sent her was full of sympathy. "Melian, my friend, I really think-"

But what he thought went forever unsaid, for in that moment, the bright lights of Illuin and Ormal, the Lamps that lit the world, flickered and changed, dropping to half its potency, as if one Lamp had failed somehow. The tremendous crashing sound far to the North, followed by an all-too-familiar baritone voice, laughing manically with triumph, sent dread through both the Maiar.

"Melkor." They spoke at the same time, drawing close to one another, both trembling with horror, and the next thing they were aware of was another crashing, this one in the furthest South, accompanied by another cruel, pitiless laugh, and the weakened light of the Lamps faded and was gone, leaving the world blanketed in darkness, pierced only by the distant stars.

* * *

Athaewen looked at the devastation in a sudden and appalled horror. This...... She sensed him. Mairon. Her gaze turned to him. "This is not what I wanted, this is not what you told me would happen."

The golden giant laughed. **"I told you you would be here with us when the Lamps were destroyed. Your sister shall think you were part of this, no doubt, or at least fear it. I know she told you all those warnings about my master and what she truly feared of me**." His smile became a thing of malice and then the thing of golden and admirable nature was an armored giant with flesh of stone and claws of iron and eyes that burned like dead stars. " **That's the problem with you, little Athaewen. Your sister was right.** "

She barely had the time to register the fullness of her dawning horror. Her sister had warned her this whole time and in the realization that what she had seen as jealousy and envy of her potential was love, she saw Gorthaur's form striding toward her, a casual display of his magic meaning he trod the air as easily as she could. Then he spoke the words that sealed her fate, and all the long misery that followed.

**"I have her, master. The Palantir you sought."**

Something materialized, or had it always been there and she just not seen it? The last thoughts of Athaewen-who-was were that, the wonder if the darkness had truly materialized or merely been a cloak, if the last and first sight of Melkor was this horrid mockery of her sister's gift.

Eyes burned with light that withered as with heat and pierced as with cold, and she heard a voice, a thing of utter malevolence. It was not darkness that moved and spoke, for darkness was one of Melian's gifts, and in her hands, held no fear. This was Old Night, the fell power of a Dark Enemy that twisted and ruined things for the sake of ruining them.

" **Well done, my good and faithful servant**." A voice with the booming power and honeyed compulsion to heed of a Vala echoed. The light of Old Night fell upon her and she cursed that the true-dark that crept upon her might be the last time she could think of her sister as herself.

* * *

She awoke in Utumno. The place had been called hell and now that she was here, she knew that it was worse. Hell was a word, a description, a thousand myths and stories that would someday be told by the Deathless to know the sensation of fear, for otherwise there were often things that left them curiously detached from a broader world. To entertain themselves they sought things that they could not understand, and in that she grasped, dimly, how so terrible a force as now held her captive could have gained his first followers.

Now he did not need them. She was chained, the chains held small spikes that dug into her and pulsed with a greenish energy, and she looked down. A circle, of a sort.

_**"A summoning circle, little sister of Melian. You are the bait, your sister is the true quarry we wanted. If you remain a good little child, we shall even allow your existence as you are now, and permit the greatest sight you see the memory of your sister as she was."** _

Athaewen snarled. "NO!”

In a sudden eruption of energy she burned through the chains, which became reddish and liquid and dripped, sparks of fell energy flashing with a flash of energy and a sound of explosive power. She flew up, as she could see her. Melian, coming to what she no doubt thought would be a chance to rescue her. Blood dripped from her side and from her wings and she didn't care. "MELIAN, RUN, IT'S A TRAP. YOU WERE RIGHT, I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO YOU."

Snarls of wrath followed and the last sight of her sister, the true last sight of her twin was her as a being of shining wings of darkness, eyes soft and compassionate, full of tears, and her sister catching a brief glimpse of something vast and dark with terrible eyes that grasped her and then fleeing in terror. Athaewen had a smile on her face, the last time her face could form such an expression as Melian escaped to safety, and then the darkness hurled her to the ground with a guttural snarl of fury.

_**"I wanted the greater sister and now I have to deal with the lesser!"** _

* * *

Again she awoke, bound by her hands and her legs, the same barbed chains holding her and she could feel pulses of terrible energy surging into her. Before stood a thing that her true self could not grasp, for there was nothing a child of truth and of fullness could see. That thought, and others like it, would fade with time. Instead of a thing of incompleteness and hate and envy and malice made manifest, wanton destruction for its own sake as an impulse that offered false glories and ultimate ruin, she saw a being clad in the twisted variant of her sister's great shield, light shining within it. It was not the stars of blessed Varda, the Queen, but a twisted mockery of them.

" _ **My portion was to be King of Arda, the balance of the gifts of all my brethren."**_ Spoke the voice of malice that sought to give her the new face and name she would wear. _**"Mine the hands that can kill or heal, if so I wish. For among those gifts is the portions of the Feanturi, the soul-masters."**_ At that phrase Athaewen would have understood but she, now a nameless, breaking thing, knew the same weeping fear that all other Maia thus changed knew first, their common memory.

 _ **"Yes..."**_ The voice purred. _ **"Now you begin to see. There are fools that say I might even be redeemable, or understandable. The elder son who dared to imagine what my father never did. That is not true, it has never been true. I did not want to imagine someone else's creation, little Maia, I wanted to create my own things. Not to be king in the name of another, but king in my own name. And I cannot do that. There is only one who wields the Flame Imperishable, only one who can bring forth novelty out of nothing. Well..."**_ and his claw brushed her face as she wept and whimpered, the sound of fear drawing a cold and malicious laughter _**"...I don't need to create out of nothing when my father provides me such lovely canvases upon which to work, now do I? The power that has reshaped those foolish Quendi, the Avari, who sought to see if there was a monster in the north is but that of Vaire, that of Namo, that of Lorien. The power of the soul, my favorite thing to wield. A thing that permits me, if not to create, to reshape what father built, not in his image..."**_

And now she saw those eyes and from them blazed a light that coursed through her. A being of darkness who could not take the light of the Sun and barely tolerated that of the Moon was reshaped by the balefires of Melkor, which denied access to any other light in its nature.

 _ **"But in mine."**_ He smiled triumphantly as he moved his hands and eyes away from her, striding around her. The light burned and she could feel her body....twisting....feel organs growing and shifting, feel the light that was her gift from Eru fading.

_**"Namo could do this too, you know. He takes souls and he reshapes them, but his is an art of reshaping to cleanse wounds. He takes wounded souls and makes them able to bear the light of the Valar while retaining their shapes. That is his reward from our father, and it is why I hate him nearly as much as Manwe. What is a throne, when you can reforge SOULS!"** _

He pointed to Gorthaur, whose look at him was a thing that confused her. She would have expected awe and joy. Instead she saw an aristocrat's face marked with a frown and sneer of cold command.

_**"That one was once the greatest forge-master in Arda. Give him dross and he could make mithril. Give him gold and he might make a Ring to give him power as a lesser ghost to me. Give him aluminium and he might make a star-craft of his own to bring our power to my... to the Valie who shall become mine, in the end of things. Manwe stole from me what was never his to take! From that gifted Maia of Aule's, I have made my own servant, Gorthaur. A master of sorcery. My own image and my own likeness grants him power greater than any could imagine. Even her, the accursed one who ignites each of Varda's stars and maintains them would kneel before him. Broken, sundered, one I could reforge and what a gift might she be in that case. And that leaves me with you to... hone my skills upon."** _

Clawed hands reached for her as her light faded and her body turned black and began to swell and alter.

_**"Your sister would have been a prize beyond reckoning, what children she might have birthed for me! A shame that no child of Ainur blood could be sired upon mortals that think, but such is my father's will and none would defy that. You? Athaewen Palantir, the Far-Sighted Healer?"** _

Silence came, she couldn't see, she couldn't see, she was blind. Blind, crippled, her very nature destroyed. Then he laughed, long and cold and cruel.

 _ **"I know just what to do with you. You shall become Palantir again, not for my accursed father and his dreams and his luxury of CREATION-"**_ The word was bellowed and her ears bled, as did Gorthaur's- _**"But for me. A Hidden Woman of Shadows, my Thuringwethil. I shall also give to you the blessing I have to the other healers, who shall at last have a queen worthy of their ranks."**_ And then he stood before her clad in ice and in terrible splendor as he had been that day, long ago now, when he had fallen from the skies and she had fled where Melian had fought for she knew some things were too terrible to face.

Power echoed out, the Feanturi-arts but in a terrible and malicious echo, that which healed and granted rest become that which changed and mutated and reshaped and mutilated the soul. Her mouth became more of a muzzle, great fangs erupting from it and she felt as if she were hollowed out, her very nature lost to her.

_**"You are queen of my vampires, the soul-eaters, who drink blood in a hunger that shall never truly be sated! Now rise, Thuringwethil, and go forth to the top of my mountains. And behold that which you are now my watch-dog, the lesser image of a lesser family."** _

Thuringwethil looked at wings that were like those of bats in the sense that a rabid tiger is like that of a house-cat. They looked more like (and in time to come she would grasp that they were) the prototype of dragon-wings, scaled and with vicious claws, and as she was given a mirror to see the horrid thing that she had become, everything that she had loved and that she was taken from her, she screamed, the first echoing howl of vampiric malice, and before her captives mourned and the Orcs made a bedlam of joy that another of the Great Ones knew the same accursed misery that they did.

She took flight then, hating the way her wings moved as she would ever hate herself, for this was the most subtle and most destructive of the Feanturi arts that Melkor had twisted. Her soul would never find satisfaction or contentment, seeking ever to spread the misery and emptiness it knew but never sating it. She rested, then, on the edge of Utumno, and heard a distorted memory of an old beloved voice, now lost to her.

_"No matter what, sister, I love you, and I always will love you."_

She wept and then she howled in that same dissonance that echoed through the towers in Utumno, and a dark lord on his dark throne laughed, and his eyes turned to Melkor as he said: "Bring me the next," and a spirit of fire came who was soon to be reshaped into her new brother, Gothmog.

* * *

Thuringwethil moved silently through the shadows of the star-lit forest, her Master's command burning in her very being, pounding with every beat of her blackened heart: _**"Locate your sister. Bring her and her offspring to me."**_

The compulsion to obey Morgoth who had once been Melkor had grown harder to resist as the years had passed, and eventually, she had ceased trying: even if she could break his control, what good would it do? Where could she flee that he would not find her, who would aid a being like her, that craved blood to remain alive, whose appetite was insatiable? This task, however... She admitted she was delaying, stalling.

She had never forgotten Melian, oh no. She remembered her sister's sole attempt to rescue her, before she had become... this, but her longing for her twin had soured when she learned that Melian, far from remaining a mere handmaiden to Vana and Este, had wedded among the Eldar and ruled one of their lands as its Queen! Clearly, she had cast her lost twin from her mind utterly in the glory of her new life. And to learn that Melian had even borne a child... The very thought of her sister outdoing all the other Ainur, being rewarded by the Allfather with something no other Ainu had been permitted... She seethed with bitterness and rage, even as a small part of her yearned to see her twin once more. But, to hand Melian and her child to Morgoth, to allow them to become creatures as wretched as she now was? Did they truly deserve such a fate? Surely the child, young and innocent, did not?

Following Melian's still-familiar trail, and edging closer to a break in the trees, she made certain she was shielding her presence, and glanced out.

Melian, garbed as finely as any Queen of the Eldar, was seated upon the grass, an indulgent smile on her face as a tiny figure waddled around, grabbing at flowers and leaves with chubby hands. A tall silver haired Ellon, clad as richly as Melian was, followed the little one, his hands ready to catch and right it when it wobbled... it? No, Thuringwethil realized, not it, her, for it was a girl-child.

 _ **"Bring your sister and her offspring to me."**_ Morgoth's command echoed inside her head once more, and she found herself involuntarily moving forward. Why resist? Do as he asked, and she would spare herself much suffering. Melian, the ellon and their child were alone. Kill the ellon, snatch the child, and she was certain Melian would follow for the infant's sake. But the child let out a laugh, an infectious giggle that had both her parents laughing with her, as she clutched a handful of flowers in her tiny fists and toddled to Melian, offering them to her with a brilliant smile that dazzled even Thuringwethil. She had not seen such beauty in this world before!

'Fwowers, Nana. For you!' The child lisped, holding them out eagerly.

Melian took them very seriously, nodding her head. "Thank you, my Lúthien."

The child- Lúthien- squealed and flung her small arms around Melian, who embraced her tightly. "Love you Nana!"

The ellon took a seat beside them, slipping an arm around Melian, and she in turn laid her head upon his shoulder, lifting Lúthien onto her lap, where the baby snuggled against her. Thuringwethil recoiled as if the scene burned her eyes.

Memories of old, most long forgotten, were floating in her mind: the bond, the love she and her sister had once shared... She clenched her teeth as she departed, knowing she would pay a heavy price for her disobedience, but this one last thing she could give to Melian: she could at least have the time needed for her child to grow up. After that, Fate would bring what it would.

But she would never, never hand a child of her sister's line over to Morgoth.

**Author's Note:**

> Speech in bold is Sauron/Gorthaur/Mairon, speech in bold and italic is Morgoth speaking.
> 
> And yes, strictly speaking, according to the canon timeline in the Silmarillion, Morgoth was not free to order the capture of Melian and Luthien while the latter was still an infant, but we're just altering the timeline a little for the purposes of our AU.


End file.
